July 19, 2009

This week, a short episode featuring a heap of positive feedback on the Integrate ’09 vendors episode.
Then, Bomar asked if he should buy an audio interface with some DSP that he can track through, or should he just record clean and use plugins later,
and David McKeitch brought us up to speed on his indie-film tracking project.

Oh, and a reminder that there’ll be no podcasts at all next week, as Cath, Max and I are away on holiday.

March 15, 2009

This week, I discuss a couple of e-mails traded back and forth between myself and Karl Cooper, who asked about all the usual suspects…. tracking levels, compression, signal chains etc.
Which of course led me to talking (again) about this thread at prosoundweb.com
Next up, in an effort to get further through the backlog of Christmas/New Year e-mails, I cover another message from My Man in Hollywood, this time responding to some of Jim Addie’s comments from a previous episode (is this getting convoluted, or what?) on theatre speaker systems.
MMiH provided this link to show us all what serious theatre speaker systems look like! Thanks mate.
Then, something a little off the usual beaten path… Tommie Kelly wrote to tell me about his daily web-based comic strip Road Crew.
Well worth a look!
And to wrap it all up, a couple of e-mails from Jim Weishorn enquiring about dither, an oft-neglected piece of audio-nija trickery.

We’re back!
The new studio, whilst not complete, is certainly functional.
So, this ep begins with a bit of a chat regarding what the last 6-8 weeks has entailed.

Then into the meat of it:
An interview with Nick Dika (Product Manager and PR guru for Izotope) about the just released version 4 of their great mastering plugin, Ozone.
If you are interested, they have a fully-functonal 21 day trial version available for download.
Also, make sure you read the pdf on the mastering process.

Then, it’s on to some e-mail, including a lengthy one from Jim Addie about the nature of VU meters, and the benefits of having a fast-attack-fast-release compressor early in your mixdown chain….
This is rather timely, as I have recently read a piece by Mike Stavrou espousing a technique which is almost identical… and which challenges everything I have always believed (and subsequently advised my listeners) regarding dynamics.

Then another e-mail, this time from another Jim, asking about:
a. external plugin processing cards (like the TC Powercore, SSL Duende and UAD-2)
b. third octave pink noise mp3 files, and
c. audio over gigabit ethernet.

And finally, an e-mail from Ron Eastwood asking about USB turntables and cassette decks,
the legal mumbo-jumbo you hear at the end of radio commercials,
plus some tips for me on geography!

November 23, 2008

This week, Greg Anderson sent in a voice comment of his own “radio war story”,
Jim Weishorn wrote to ask for more info on subtractive eq,Alexander Williams* (no relation) wrote to ask about processing audio for live streaming (as opposed to pre-producing content),
…which led me to again remark about having VU meters rather than just peak program meters (PPM’s), and a great free VST plugin VU meter is the Modern Meter,
and then Jim wrote again asking about home theatre… setting up speakers and subwoofers and so on.
After I finished mixing this episode, I realised I didn’t really finish answering Jim’s questions, so consider this ‘part 1 of 2’.
And talk about freaky… in the very week I talk about my Energy 10.2 subwoofer, the damn thing decided to die on me! About an hour after I recorded this ep, I realised that the sub wasn’t working. After some investigating, I came to the conclusion that it had died. I took it to 2 different stores to be checked, and they both deemed that it was dead, too. So, I’m taking it to a friend’s place today for him to have a look at it (he MIGHT be able to fix it). But if he has no luck, looks like I’ll be buying a new sub in the next week or so.

November 16, 2008

This week, “Big C” asked about combatting air conditioner hum,
Tim Cumings sent in an audio sample of a Skype interview he conducted (pre and post eq),
Greg Anderson wrote to say that he’s launched his Atomic Time Keeping podcast on the world (Onya, Greg!)
He also wondered about mp3 encoding… mono vs stereo.
Then, I heard from Jeremy James, author of the podcast novel “The Veingel”.
Jeremy explained some of his workflow, and I offered some ideas on same… namely, downward expansion vs gating, broadband compression vs multiband compression, and so on.
A large part of what I had to say came back to getting as much done as possible NON-destructively in the multitrack environment.
Also, for those who are looking for a good, low-cost alternative multitrack recorder/editor, try out Reaper. It’s free for non commercial use, although they would like you to pay a small donation! Check it out, nonetheless.
Plus, Bruce’s new toy (which should arrive in the next day or so)… the Safe Sound Audio Dynamics Toolbox.
Can not wait for this little puppy to get here!

Yes folks.
Believe it or not, we’re finally here!
The building of this video has been an absolute labour of love…. I’d estimate that it’s taken me about 20 hours of work to complete!
Maybe, that’s partly my inexperience at producing video podcasts, but hopefully, when you watch it, you’ll see where those hours went.
In an effort to ease the load on my hosting company’s servers, I will be setting up a torrent feed later tonight.
Check back here later for a link to the torrent file.
There’s also a copy of the file at YouSendIt, plus the copy here at audio2u.com.

If you want to download a copy of the final mix of the song (featuring a couple of extra tweaks I did later), grab that here:Fear of Holding On – 320 kbit joint stereo (13MB)

Towards the end of the podcast (or is that vidcast?), I mentioned that I would make the individual instrument tracks available to anyone who wanted to have a crack at mixing the song for themselves.
Drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you the link to download the files.
Just be warned… that’s an even bigger download than the mp4!!
The tracks are 32bit mono and total about 1.1GB!
The download will be in .rar format, so you’ll need an archive utility like WinRAR (or similar) which is capable of unzipping a .rar file.

Wow! What a big week!
In episode 88, a ton of feedback regarding microphones on noisy trade show floors and the like…
Scott Hess likes the Sennheiser HMD25’s, and the HMD280-XQ’s,Tokyo Dan suggested checking out this video on YouTube, as well as this video on shooting video on a Nokia N95,
Dave King mentioned these headsets from Eartec, which look like your standard headsets that you’d get from AKG or Sennheiser, but Eartec say they will customise the circuitry for you upon request!
Then, Michael from New Zealand asked about matching RMS levels between his locally produced content, and material coming from other studios,
Jim Weishorn asked about multiband compression,
and we finished off with a discussion on the differences between MP3 and MP3Pro encoding.

I wasn’t planning on doing another podcast this early in the year, but a couple of e-mails came in, and I figured I may as well just get on answer ’em!
This week, an “end of year” greeting from long-time listener, Gary Lerude. Thanks mate!
John Meadows asked about what effects or processes get over used, and which don’t get the attention they deserve. (NB. The one thing I should have also mentioned which doesn’t receive the attention it should is mic technique!)
And Vassya asked about why 44.1 kHz or 48kHz, dither, and headphones.

So, what’s in store for episode 100?
A promo remix in real time, for Rem Lavictoire.

Yeah yeah yeah, but what about the damned prizes, man? That’s all we’re here for!

Oh yeah, right…. ok.

Well, Peter Baker at Beatbox Music
has been kind enough to donate a copy of the Podcasting Production Toolkit CD.
This is a CD of royalty free music AND sound effects that you can use for polishing up your podcast!

While I will confess to not having heard the CD yet, I have dealt with Peter professionally for over 20 years, and he has always represented some of the finest music production companies around… and I have no reason to suspect that this won’t be an AWESOME collection of sounds to have at your disposal.

And to keep the CD theme going, I have 3 more copies of the Adobe Audition 2.0 Essential Training Guide from Lynda.com to give away as 2nd, 3rd and 4th prizes.

OK, so what do you have to do to win one of these great prizes?

Well, this is where you’re gonna hate me. I’m not going to tell you… just yet.
In order to make this fair, I’m going to hold off posting the details of the competition for 72 hours.
The reason for that is, it will give those on slower internet connections a chance to be involved too.
So, at around midday GMT on Wednesday (25th July 2007), I’ll post the details right here.

July 8, 2007

This week, I saw a news item in one of my tech blog feeds (don’t recall which one) about a new site called Soundsnap, which is kind of like YouTube for audio. Commercial-free music and sound effects to download which can be used in podcasts and the like.

I also received an e-mail from Jim Weishorn… (just between you and me, I think he’s got a calculator fetish, but don’t tell him I said that!) where he calculated the time it takes for a 45 degree splice across analogue quarter inch tape to pass by the heads! Woah. (Honestly though, nice work, Jim!)

He also asked about the idea of using different compression ratios for different frequency ranges within you audio. Not a concept I’d ever heard of, but an interesting one nonetheless.